Friday, August 21, 2009

Just finished reading Fred Kaplan's "1959: the Year Everything Changed", and while I'm not convinced 1959 qualifies as the singular hinge year of the 20th century, I'm not sure that matters (even to Kaplan), and it's a good book in any case.

The common theme is a sense of liberation from traditional constraints (e.g., hackneyed art, pervasive racism, the 'tyranny of numbers', and an optimism (and dread) toward the emerging "new frontier" in politics, technology, and art.